Genealogy
I sleep with my head to a rotting wall.
Until today I never knew my uncle's name.
When I smile my lips bleed.
My mother traces our family tree to seed.
I am a leaf. I regret how i acquire
what I will inherit.
As I look over a drop falls from the sill,
cracked from the weight of
what sits in what was a window.
I grin and blood blossoms, descendent
toward my tongue. My heritage has a taste.
An old house has poison in its walls.
Attics are where heat and vapor rise,
the mist of history.
I wonder does what I inhale at night
cause these dreams. Rain refuses rhythm
unsteady against glass slats
it's too cold to open. If I stare
long enough I can watch the water
seeping in. Sometimes
I imagine I hear it on dry days,
reminded by a generation of stains
hidden by pillows trailing down,
bottom one the last of its line.
spinkle 2005
I sleep with my head to a rotting wall.
Until today I never knew my uncle's name.
When I smile my lips bleed.
My mother traces our family tree to seed.
I am a leaf. I regret how i acquire
what I will inherit.
As I look over a drop falls from the sill,
cracked from the weight of
what sits in what was a window.
I grin and blood blossoms, descendent
toward my tongue. My heritage has a taste.
An old house has poison in its walls.
Attics are where heat and vapor rise,
the mist of history.
I wonder does what I inhale at night
cause these dreams. Rain refuses rhythm
unsteady against glass slats
it's too cold to open. If I stare
long enough I can watch the water
seeping in. Sometimes
I imagine I hear it on dry days,
reminded by a generation of stains
hidden by pillows trailing down,
bottom one the last of its line.
spinkle 2005
